Enigmatic Variations No. 1044: Seven Things by Wiglaf

Wiglaf is a new name to me – and doesn’t seem to appear anywhere else on 15×15, so is either a new setter. or one of those occasional collaborations of setters(?). Either way he, she or they has/have produced an interesting and challenging puzzle here. It does what it says on the tin: there are seven ‘things’ to be found (in clues lacking definitions) and twelve misprints to identify a ‘group of people’ associated with these things. Lastly 18 cells to be identified to ‘reveal the theme’…

On scanning through a first pass, I chanced on HORSE at 37A – fairly obviously not defined, so likely to be a ‘thing’. I then mistakenly came up with COLT at 51 – COL for officer, T for temperature, so the theme is going to be something equestrian… except it wasn’t!

The next undefined one I spotted was THING at 26D – which was probably also a ‘thing’ in the thematc sense. ‘Things’ were not going to be as simple as they seemed!

This was a multi-session solve – some quite hard clues, some obscure (to me) words – like LOD, DYNES, NAIANT, and TSUGA. So, Chambers was much in use – paper copy by my bed, 10-year old electronic copy on the laptop, and now, for just £4.99, a fully-specced latest version on my Android smartphone… Also there was a lot packed in here – longest entry was 8 letters, lots of short words – which usually tend to be the easiest to get, but not necessarily so here.

Eventually a few more THINGS came out of the woodwork – COAT, not colt; PIPE; HEAD; HANDS –  but I was a long way from getting to the denouement. Then, the top-left to bottom-right diagonal took shape as ‘DRUNKEN NIGHTS’ – which explains the ‘THINGS’ of the title, and in the top right corner S + EVEN gave the number. Even so, a bit of Wiki-oogling was needed to link it all together – SEVEN DRUNKEN NIGHTS being a traditional folk song, probably most popularly associated with THE DUBLINERS – the ‘group of people’ identified by the corrected misprints.

There is plenty of background information on Wikipedia – and elsewhere, but this is a traditionally themed folk-song – with variations from many cultures – where a drunken husband comes home each night to find gradually more incriminating evidence that someone else has ‘had their kippers in the grill’, while he has been out drinking. The wife explains them all away, but a nagging doubt remains behind the alcoholic haze… The horse he saw outside was a sow (with a saddle?); the coat he saw on the floor was a blanket (with buttons?), the boots by the door were flowerpots (with laces?)…etc…until (look away those of you of a gentle disposition) he sees some hands on her breasts (a nightgown – with fingers?) and lastly a ‘thing’ sticking up under the covers (a rolling pin…OK, too much detail!).

Lots of fun – eventually – after a challenging slog of a solve. By coincidence, I was on a business trip in Dublin the week I was working on this – although only one drunken night was involved, and no wife waiting at the hotel room with a litany of deceptions and excuses!… 

Welcome Wiglaf – whoever you are – and, well, follow that!